My new theory about the DDoS-er is that it's someone who, for some reason, really hates deep dungeons. Not only is this one happening while Pilgrim's Traverse is still new, remember that the last wave of them came around in the post-6.55 lull, when people are trying stuff they wouldn't normally.

The last thing I did in FFXIV before the DDoS was answer someone's question about what new jobs are in the next expansion with 'Chemist', and you know what, I think that's the best way that could've gone down. I'm not explaining it, they're not learning how, we're just leaving it on 'Chemist'.

It's Ein, alchemist and primal researcher! While I'm off making elaborate videos about the lore of a deep dungeon, she's off telling people how exactly Necron works and that, no, you SHOULDN'T drink that. (She's also due for some updated glam shots come 7.4, I don't do those often.)

We sat down with Toshiyuki Itahana, the character designer of Sphene, for a chat on how the Queen of Alexandria came to life in FFXIV! 🎨✨ Check out the interview and concept art on the Square Enix blog! 🎤 sqex.to/4nQYO

Ein doesn't just play, she uses a primal-themed Plus/Same deck that people REALLY hate going up against. She might have a card of herself, she's probably famous enough to be, like, a two-star. But the question of where those cards even come from is WAY too weird for me to hold to that headcanon.

It's all "I want WOL to get hurt more" until it happens in a way that's cool and interesting and actually questions/confronts WOL's agency, then it's an affront to the MSQ and "unsafe" for players. See also: the 4.0 scripted Zenos fights, In from the Cold, literally anything to do with Ilberd,

Slightly rewrite the English version of the Y'shtola and Matoya conversation so it becomes clearer that no, Y'shtola's NOT killing herself to see, Matoya's just doing a 'parent worried the kid's riding a motorcycle' thing. It's the one wide FFXIV misconception that I'm pretty sure we can fix!

It's Bunlith: The Witch Upstairs 📅 EPISODE 1 NOW AVAILABLE TO WATCH ON KICKSTARTER! Watch Now!! 📺 www.kickstarter.com/projects/bun...

I started some indistinct time during 3.5 or 3.55. I wasn't really keeping abreast of content currency or anything, I don't think I even knew I WAS up to date for a while, but I was definitely doing Dun Scaith when it was current.

You know what, maybe I just DON'T do solo deep dungeon attempts for a few days until these server crashes resolve.

The funniest part about this to me is that it's from July 2021. That's late Shadowbringers, which is broadly thought to be one of the easiest eras of the game. This person would've burst into flames on contact with Dawntrail.

Ein has a lot of inspirations over the years, but I think the biggest one is Doctor Who. More stories should have a character whose main skill is just being aggressively CLEVER at the problem in front of them, and Ein has always been my attempt to bring that into an RP space.

Any picture of Jonathan Bailey either looks like he's designed for the optimal level of hotness possible to people who like men, or like he's a mid-tier Youtuber. There's no in-between, those are his two modes. Weirdly, this is also true of G'raha Tia.

I bet there's gonna be some weird long-term consequences to FFXIV's mass gear unlocking. Like, I bet that we'll see people completely ignoring huge swathes of future equipment, because they already have their one 'look' and never have to swap it out now.

Friendly advice for people: Give a once-over to the crafting-specific sets, especially the class-exclusive ones. Guarantee you, there is some fucking GOLD in there that you've never thought of because you never tried to make a Weaver glam.

Of course they do this glamor unrestriction, like, two patches AFTER they finally give me a nice all-class white coat! I mean I can't complain, Ein gets to wear whatever kind of labcoat fits the weather.

It was foretold in the sacred texts! By the way, the same short story also confirmed Y'shtola is related to the Old Sharlayan weapons merchant, the Forum member in the Cosmic Exploration quests, and the miqo'te in FFXV's XIV quest!

This might be a good way to get variant dungeons closer to more regular content, which might not be the worst thing, even if I don't want it at all.

I WISH I had an explanation for this one! The landscape looks... kinda 'cartoon Arabia'? It's like Kingdom Hearts Agrabah with less brown. So we might be seeing a 1001 Nights thing?

Wait, I recognize this spacesuit design

Time for the now-requisite FFIX reference check! This is Treno, one of the cities in FFIX; it was mentioned in one of the recent short stories. The lights resemble the Card Stadium, but it looks like it's not the same part of the city.

A repost for the later crowd! Come see a video that Jesse Cox called 'excellent', which was a VERY nice thing to see! But also come learn Feo Ul's backstory, because the fact we even GOT that is great.

New #FFXIV video day! The Pilgrim's Traverse has a whole bunch of fun lore for people game enough to fight through the whole thing, so I did just that! Get ready for unanswerable philosophical debates, sabotender societies, and of course, weird body horror! #ffxivlorevids youtu.be/qSc307Ml4fk

I think this is the new variant dungeon. Radz-at-Han wouldn't be my first pick for where to go with them, but I'll take it!

🚨 THE BUNLITH ANIME IS REAL 🚨 🎉Introducing BUNLITH: THE WITCH UP STAIRS 🐇🐇 📅 EPISODE 1 is premiering on November 3rd (thats in 5 days!!) 📈 KICKSTARTER CAMPAIGN FOR SEASON 1 launching at the same time!!! SUBSCRIBE SO YOU DON'T MISS THE LAUNCH: youtube.com/@b0tster

And now, the dumbest FFXIV lore/story revelation I've had in years. You know that 'Ascian roundtable' scene in 2.x that people use as evidence that Emmerololth is still alive, and so the Ascians had a full complement of thirteen members at the time? ...there are FIFTEEN ASCIANS in attendance.

I need to make a weird FFXIV request! Does anyone have any decent pictures of the final Pilgrim's Traverse tileset? Not floor 100 itself, the 80+ stretch.

I unironically held this restriction a few years ago, and I think I should reinstate it, because almost every game I've played recently and genuinely hate had a protagonist that was neither girl nor Kirby. Looking at you, Clair Obscur and Hades 1. (Still trying to figure out how you fit in, BG3.)

My playthrough of Pokemon Z-A has collided with my weird lore nerdery to raise an important question: Rotom Phones are everywhere, they seem to be the default 'phone' for the Pokemon world, and that's without mentioning other Rotom tech. ...so where are all the Rotoms coming from?

The Yok Huy society quest made me cry, REALLY hard. Oh my god. That might be the single most emotionally powerful exploration of Dawntrail's themes in the whole expansion. Everybody, PLEASE DO IT.

Floor 100 cleared! And HOOOOO BOY this is gonna make one hell of a lore video

The only thing that's possibly swaying me to buy Pokemon Legends Z-A is the confirmation that yes, the Mega-Starmie picture I saw was real. Somehow, though, that information alone is tempting me. I REALLY want to use that thing in a competitive environment.

Well, the first PAX video was such a bomb that I'm rethinking how to approach things. The next one I was planning to do is writing and woldbuilding-focused, so it has more of a home on my channel, but I'm wondering if I should keep it in the wings for a bit and do a FFXIV video or two before then.

New video day, and this time, it's NOT an FFXIV one! #PAXAus had some great panels, so I wanted to document them for the sake of everyone who couldn't be there. And today, it's #MtG designer Gavin Verhey's keynote presentation, on his own lessons from 15 years of game design! youtu.be/fxp0lBZADiQ

Oh hey that new Dissidia game revealed the starting(?) lineup, and-- wait how the fuck is the FFXIV rep GAIA!? I mean sure, let's rock, but what series of decisions led to this being the end result?

In the spirit of the Steam Next Fest and just beign at PAX, I'm gonna pull an @caseyexplosion.bsky.social and do a quick rundown of the games that stood out to me there, most of which have demos! (You're gonna see common themes, those mostly stem from the fact I have specific tastes.)

Looking at the Australian indie games showcasing at PAX, I've noticed a weird trend in the sci-fis specifically that I'm not sure what to make of: Almost all of them on some prominent level feature old or broken technology. And the rest are more inconclusive rather than exceptions.

PAX has been great, I'm gonna have some videos coming focusing on panels that I really want to be able to share with people who weren't there! And at least one video that's gonna be more experimental. It'll take a bit to get the energy to edit, though-- OH GOD THERE'S STILL A DAY OF THE CON LEFT

In Final Fantasy Tactics if a unit gains too much faith they leave your party to go find God. Have you ever wondered what would happen if you had Beast Tongue and got a monster unit to maximum faith? Of course you haven't. No one has.

IT BEGINS (Well it begins tomorrow, but there's already one cosplayer here, so yes, it has begun!)

I mostly have Ein aware of events as much as she reasonably would be, as a primal researcher living in Ul'dah. A lot of it is just current events she hears about, that doesn't necessarily affect her. She knows more about Necron than she does anything else that happened in Dawntrail.

The most weirdly mad I ever see FFXIV players get happens when I say that I don't like Rathalos Extreme for not letting healers heal. It's genuinely bizarre, you dare say 'but I don't WANT to be reduced to one and a half buttons' and the hatred of a thousand suns is directed at you personally.

This is one of the biggest reasons I don't want to see FFXIV try to repeat Shadowbringers. The WoL is a silent, blank-slate protagonist, the amount of stories they can actually lead is very small, and amounts to 'everything Shadowbringers already milked for all it had in it'.

Ein is 30-something. Probably. MAYBE early 40s. Her family getting Warriors of Light-ed means that she genuinely doesn't know, because she can't remember most of her early life landmarks. And out of all the problems that brings, age is a pretty low-priority one to sort out.

Please accept this window into hell: I was the only person on a trivia team that recognized the song playing in the music round was Fuck The Pain Away by Peaches.

I'm in one of those moods to start looking for games with very specific possible playstyles: What are some RPGs OTHER than Fallout where a luck-centric build is fun? (Use your own heart and soul to decide what a 'luck-centric build' even is, it's not always as simple as pumping up a 'Luck' stat.)

Last time, Monster Hunter players got to be Dragoons. This time, looks like they get to be Dark Knights! ...and also Pictomancers, somehow! Look, I don't know how that's gonna work, that's on THAT game's playerbase to figure out. www.youtube.com/watch?v=ca1i...

I'll always say it: Metroid Prime succeeds at everything it sets out to do with flying colors. There is not a single part of this game that even remotely disappoints. And yet, weirdly, I often prefer Prime 2. It tries things I find more interesting, even if it fumbled the execution a few times.

By the way, for people who follow my Youtube channel but might've missed the community post: I'm doing channel memberships now! This gives access to members-only videos, covering stuff that's fun but not QUITE right for a full video. The first one's already available: a lyric analysis for eScape!

A friend accidentally made a comparison between Emet-Selch and Nandor from What We Do in the Shadows, and now I'm stuck going 'wait a minute, there's something here'. They actually are the same character, just in radically different treatments in radically different stories!